[Patricia Fay Morgan]

Patricia Fay Morgan  asked the Naked Scientists:

I am currently working on a cross disciplinary PhD in fine arts and environmental issues and what I have been interested in doing in the fine arts part of my research and something that I have been interested in my own art work for many years is the idea of 'visualising' unseen forces in nature. I have for example placed an ultra sonic recording devise next to a tree and was interested to hear the sounds that were there.

I have also used heat emission video in an ‘art experiment’ with myself and tree, though that wasn’t very successful because trees and humans are such different heats. I then heard that all living things emit emf’s and I wondered if you could visualise emf’s from trees and humans?  I have recently been to speak to a physicist at UNSW the University that I am currently working at and I was really interested to find out that while there were many sophisticated machines to detect electromagnetic waves there wasn't any way to 'see' them.  (I am not a scientist and new to this field so I could be wrong here). 

One of the reasons that I am interested in this and in the context of my PhD, which intersects fine arts and environmental issues - was that I was thinking if you could 'visualise' some of these unseen forces - like weak emf's for example or magnetic fields or vector fields (sorry I know very little about what is out there in the unseen world), that you might be able to show some form of communication between humans and for example trees?

I would be interested to hear your answer - it might be that it crosses biology, physics and electrical engineering?

Kind Regards, Patricia

University of New South Wales
Sydney

What do you think?

[RD]

Kirlian photography can produce striking images of plant leafs (see links below).
However do not be misled: the aura is made by the high voltage used to create the image, it is not innate energy within the leaf.
A Kirlian photograph can be made of anything living or dead, the effect depends on electrical conductivity, (e.g. dry leaves produce poor auras).

A kirlian photograph (a form of contact print photography involving high voltage) shows a corona effect around the perimeter of a leaf.

http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/imagePopUpDetails.html?pop=1&id=726820068&pviewid=&country=67&search=kirlian&matchtype=FUZZY

Kirlian photograph of a leaf of the Kangaroo Vine (Cissus antarctica), showing the electromagnetic discharge around the edges.
This luminous discharge is the result of high-energy interactions between the subject and a powerful applied electric field
(in this case 32,000 Volts).

http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/imagePopUpDetails.html?pop=1&id=726820024&pviewid=&country=67&search=kirlian+AND+photograph&matchtype=FUZZY

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

[RD]

Healthy vegetation strongly reflects infrared (IR) radiation.
IR photographs of trees are eye-catching ...

Black & White IR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SD10_IR_Bending_Tree.jpg

Colour IR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Color_infrared_SFOSEAYYZ-tree.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography